Plant-based Homesteading and Sustainable Living

Livestock

First off, if you’re coming here from the “Things We Love” section of Harrowsmith’s spring issue, thank you so much for taking the time to stop by! I have been a huge fan of their magazine, books, and TV show since I was a teen, so it was an unbelievable honour to be featured; I’mRead more

I’ve dreamed of keeping bees since I was in my early twenties, pouring over Harrowsmith Country Life and Mother Earth News magazines. When a girlfriend invited me to help with her father’s fall honey extraction while I was living in Nova Scotia, that was it, I was smitten. I did a lot of reading overRead more

I’m in need of some good, solid advice, and am hoping my goat-keeping friends out there might be able to help. I’ve been pining for goats for years, and the urge is starting to overwhelm me. I would be happy enough just to have them as pets (in lieu of the second dog and/or catRead more

It seems a certain someone is well on her way to joining the resident broodies in their stubborn refusal to leave the nest (the Brahmas are well into their third month now), but I’ve got to give her credit, she’s a lot smarter about it than the others. Reepicheep appears to have figured out that if sheRead more

Our second batch of chicks arrived early last week, and in preparation, my husband built a cozy little nursery pen inside the coop. We set things up anticipating having to use the heat lamp, but I was still hoping that one of my broody hens would step up to the plate and make that unnecessary.Read more

We feel blessed to live in a place surrounded by wildlife, and usually we’re nothing but casual observers to the daily struggle for survival. When we made the decision to start free ranging our chickens (they were going a little stir crazy spending the long, rainy winter cooped up in their roomy “compound”), we knewRead more

I had no idea when we first got our chickens how much veterinary work would be involved with caring for them. I’ve had pets my whole life, and it’s only on the very rare occasion that I’ve ever had to do any kind of doctoring. So far with my hens, I’ve had to deal withRead more

Well, we have finally finished the coop enough that I decided it was time to tell you a bit about our summer project. We’re pretty pleased with how it turned out, considering that it’s made almost entirely out of leftovers from our house. The only things that we had to buy were a few extraRead more